On Thu, 18 Jun 2009, Jules Richardson wrote:
Al Hartman wrote:
I can buy another unit cheap, but that
doesn't get me into the HD.
Hmm, the hdd's locked and she never set a password for that?
Might be worth contacting IBM about it - I'd suggest perhaps trying a BIOS
upgrade, but doing that is risky if the hdd really is protected and the
protection is tied to a particular BIOS release.
The maintenance manual just says that a system board replacement's the only
official way around a forgotten supervisor password, and a hdd replacement's
the only way around a forgotten hdd password :-(
The CMOS battery died on my 600E a few months ago, and it never did this (in
fact I ran it with no CMOS battery at all for quite a while and just bashed
in new time/date info every time I cold-booted it) so it sounds like a bug /
hardware failure / corruption issue.
You could try a CMOS reset, I suppose (maintenance manual's here if you don't
have it already:
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/09n1033.pdf )
as I really doubt that'd make things any worse.
The *ONLY* possitive thing I can say is that I'm pretty sure it isn't the
HD password that is set. When that is set you have to type it in to boot,
so that is a pretty good indication it is the Supervisor password. Hardware
passwords on Thinkpads are *BAD* news.
Zane